Sieanna: Unchained: career skill "Living Bomb" problems

Warhammer: Vermintide 2 Gameplay Feedback
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Unchained Sieanna’s ultimate needs a serious rework. At the moment it is just a get-out-of-jail-card to prevent you from exploding when you couldn’t manage your Overcharge. The usefulness is near 0 compared to every other career skill of every other hero. This uselessness comes from the extremely low damage especially versus Armoured targets (Stormvermin for example) and the insanely high cooldown (2 minutes).

Bardin’s Ranger Veteran is a good comparison as he has the same cooldown. He can dish out a good load of damage, farm ultimate while doing so with Resourceful Combatant melee weapon trait, help teammates while being invisible and nearly don’t even have to care about getting any damage.

Without level 25 50% damage increase talent

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With level 25 50% damage increase talent “Blazing Crescendo”

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So you want her to be even more powerful than she is?

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I don’t know if that was the intention. The damage it does to enemies is negligible, it does FF damage to your team, and it doesn’t have the knockback/interrupt potential that other ults of this type have. You can’t even rely on it to give you breathing space if you get surrounded.
It needs a little something extra so that it doesn’t just feel like a heat dump, because right now it feels like that’s all it is.

Y’know what would be really cool? A fire tornado instead of an explosion. Like a blightstorm, but centred on Sienna.

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I agree, but you’d have to take something away from her to give her that buff. I’d start by stripping her insane toughness and huge heat bar.

The other ults don’t reset overheat bars without a talent choice (pyro) and they don’t save them from blowing up. And it does create space.

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Yeah, I’m just spitballing really. It just irks me a bit that there’s a bunch of ults that are basically the same.

That’s exactly what I’m saying. It’s really just an emergency heat dump.

The problem with using it to create space is that you only do this when you’re in proper trouble. Unfortunately you’ve just halved your damage output and you’re still surrounded by bad guys, because the ult does about as much damage and knockback as a particularly spicy fart.

The talents for it are also a bit questionable. The damage increase does sweet FA because the base damage is so low to start with, and the area increase just moves it from ‘likely to hit your team’ to ‘will definitely hit your team’.

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Oh I agree that her design is very poor. So is a lot of the characters. But I’d rather see a complete rework in the image of:
"

As the Unchained, Sienna’s focus now lays in magically enhanced melee combat. She can channel the winds of Aqshy to provide both an armour of flame that protects her and a mighty spell of fiery destruction, detonating around herself.

Sienna Unchained has thrown caution aside, embracing every possible scrap of power from the Winds of Magic to strengthen her. She lives from one dizzying magical high to the next, getting as close to the foe as she can – the better to witness that sublime moment when flesh and bone succumb to the glorious flame she now serves.

Taken from http://www.vermintide.com/

They got the increased melee damage right, but they made her ult, lame and her spell (staff) use too frequent and effective. I think the ult ended where it did because they gave her so much toughness. She’s damn near unkillable in the hands of even average players. She needed to be a powerhouse, fighting on the edge of oblivion in my opinion. A living bomb so to speak - offensive capabilities through the roof, but tempered by that thin edge she had to balance, as well as some increased toughness (but not to the levels they are now 50% DR is ridiculous), and way more heat produced when using her staffs. Both to make her less viable as a full on ranged character but also to let her “buff up” faster.

Right now she is extremely powerful, I’d actually call her overpowered, but in the wrong way. It’s not in the form of her offensive capabilities, but in the form of her inability to die, and her gigantic heat pool that allows her to outperform her other careers in terms of DPS output from her staves.

This could be a rework, I think would be awesome for Unchained and in line with her original concept:

Sienna Fuegonasus (Unchained Reworked)

Passives & Abilities:

Name Description
Hit Points 125
Blood Magic 30% damage taken transferred to Overcharge
Aqshy Unrestrained 30% more heat generated from staff use
Slave to Aqshy No Overcharge slowdown
Unstable Strength Increased melee damage in the form of fire damage on high Overcharge (10% per 25 overcharge, max 6 stacks).
this damage increase would be split 50/50 as direct fire damage and fire DoT (DoT not being stackable)
Fire damage deals half damage to armoured units, including super armour.
Living Bomb
(career skill)		 Sienna explodes, dealing damage to surrounding enemies and slowly clearing her Overcharge (Max 10s - depending on how much overcharge she has). While her overcharge is clearing, she receives a melee weapon buff that deals 50% of her melee damage as fire damage in a small AOE around the initial target struck.
Cooldown 2:00

Talent tree:

Level Option 1 Option 2 Option 3
5 Backblast
Blocking reflects 20% of the damage blocked back on the attacker		 Form of the Fire Wind
Increases max overcharge by 25.0%.
Volcanic Body
Increases maximum health by 20.0%
10 Feuerbach’s Fury
Successful charged melee attacks grant 40.0% increased stamina regeneration for 2 seconds		 Essence Syphon
Clears any wounds and converts temporary health to permanent health when bosses die.		 Seared Nerves
Revived allies take 90.0% less damage for 7 seconds.
15 Dissipate
Block cost is reduced by 50% when overcharged and blocking vents Overcharge		 Conduit
Increases rate of venting overcharge by 30% and reduces damage taken from venting by 50%		 Natural
Reduces overcharge generated by 15.0% (including that from damage taken via “Blood Magic”)
20 Soul Quench
Staggering an enemy with a melee attack grants temporary health. Health gained is based on the strength of the stagger.		 Reckless Rampage
Striking multiple enemies in one swing with a melee weapon grants temporary health based on the number of targets hit. Min 1, Max 5 enemies.		 Burn-Bloom
Something other than healshare
25 Flame Wave
ncreases the radius of Living Bomb explosions (including melee) by 50.0%.		 Blazing Crescendo
Increase the explosion damage of Living Bomb (including melee) by 50%.		 Tick, Tick, Tick
Reduces the cooldown of Living Bomb by 30.0%

Now all of this should be subject to rigorous testing of course, but I think it’d create a much cooler and diverse Unchained, while keeping her in line with the original concept, as well as make her unique in her playstyle compared to the other 2 careers. I’d also like to note that I don’t like the THP talents as they are now, I think they are conceptually flawed and imbalanced as they are now. TBH I think THP being such an integral part of a characters survivability, and something that needs to be trained, should be accessible from lvl 1, since even new players need to learn this mechanic pretty early on.

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Unchained was very well balanced in that regard when the active couldn’t stop you from going poof.
But then, the active was even less useful.
I could see her take more DoT damage on overheat, and if the heat bar stays, potentially even 25 less hp.
As for the active: Aye, the talents are whack.
I use the active to create space when picking up teammates, but it’s damage is really nothing to write home about.
Well, maybe to express pity.

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Now we have the Crowbill as anti-armour, Sienna unchained with Crowbill + fireball build for anti- monster + anti-armour is pushing God tier. With the nice attack pattern of the Crowbill I find I can press BOOM(F) for fun,especially using resourceful combatant. Use Barkskin for real “comedy combat”. I don’t use living bomb to actually hurt anything, just to vent like a loon.

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To all you guys that are going off-topic with their totally redundant opinion: The topic is ONLY about her career skill, which is useless as of now for anything else except venting her Overcharge. Every other career skill of every other class has at least two situations where they’re useful.

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  1. AOE Stagger
  2. Kill slave rats
  3. Clear overcharge.
  4. Cancel overcharge death

That’s 4

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If the argument is that the career would have to be nerfed if the active is buffed, it’s not offtopic, nor redundant.
I actually like having classes that don’t have strong actives - they mostly just detract from the gameplay.
As written, I use it to stagger so I can revive allies, and it may also give me the room to fire a few fireballs - sadly, unchained is still better with a staff than with a melee weapon.
Should it deal more damage?
Oh, absolutely.
I’d love to merge the two offensive talents into one, and have suggested as much in the past.
Dealing far more damage in close and having a larger radius with larger falloff. Could also use a DoT, thereby reducing FF while increasing offensive damage output. Then we’d have an extra Talent to play with. Should probably be either something defensive, or a temporary buff, to stay in the mold of other careers.

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1 point to each team member I believe.

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The point was that DrClassy asking for the ult to be looked at doesn’t mean he wants Unchained to be more powerful, it means he thinks the ult is crappy any needs attention. And he’s right. It really is just a heat dump.

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Though I do disagree with you (and I hope I don’t come off as aggressive), I think there is a disconnect in wants/balancing. Hear me out, but I think that we are largely on the same page.

So Unchained is a wicked melee; she hits hard, has great Area of Effect from her staff, and is a phenomenal melee combatant with her Damage over Time fire ticks. Currently, her ult really is a heat-sink (entirely intended, and I think this is why): she has fantastic damage mitigation into overcharge and can already drain the overcharge quickly, but she needs a way-out in case of a mistake. This is where the career skill arrives in force; it can save her from her own misplay.

If we also give it the power to wave-clear a horde, she enters a dangerous position. If her ult insta-gibs a horde and then she only needs anti-armor/boss weapons. If it hurts armored troops effectively, why take anti-armor weapons? You just have to land a head-shot from any weapon and end it there.

I think increasing damage too-much is a poor idea: she is already damage-heavy as it is. However, I do agree on one point: more stagger would be great. The design of the ult is an “Oh-sh*t” button and it would be lovely if it was an “OH-SH T!” button; better tuned for self protection so you can get out of dodge or save a toppled team-mate or whatever.

Either way, this is more or less the point of the skill at the moment:

Given that the rest of her kit is so strong already, she would need some down-tunes in her overall effectiveness in order to make space for a true, room-clobbering ult. This is, of course, all IMHO. Certainly not scripture!

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It’s useful for much more than a heat dump.

Kill horde enemies and soften up elites
Create space to escape yourself
Create space to rescue a downed teammate
Stagger boss or disabler to save downed teammate

I think it could use more damage (initial and dot) when the talent for increased damage is selected, but other than that it is fine. Being able to cancel overheat detonation is pretty huge.

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Here’s the thing no one’s mentioned yet: It’s boring.

People are saying “yeah well it can do this other thing” and then following up by saying that it’s a great heat dump. Everyone here knows that’s it’s main use. Does anyone out there really want to use an ability on a two minute timer to kill a couple of slave rats?

After you use living bomb, what’s the first thing you think after “good, I didn’t explode”? If it’s not “Now I need to get some heat up so I actually do damage again”, then you’re playing unchained wrong. Literally every other ult in the game makes you feel more powerful, even if they don’t do so mechanically. Living bomb is the only one that makes you feel weaker than normal.

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It doesn’t make me feel anything at all.
Sad as it is, Unchained still deals more damage spamming fireballs than hitting things with pointy objects.
I try to play her as that, but efficient it is not.
I don’t disagree with getting some heat again, though. Would it be fun if it didn’t clear all overcharge? Maybe.
But the point stands, if the ult is more powerful, the class has to be weaker. And how to make it less boring without making it more powerful is quite difficult.

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My vote: add aoe knockback that’s on par with Kruber/Saltz. Knocking down hordes, stunning armor and bosses (like so it can knock an ally out of a Chaos Spawn grab.) And that’s it. No extra damage. Fine if it kills some naked clan rats, but keep any extra damage away.

If she needs a ranged damage or damage resistance nerf, then fine. I don’t think it’s out of control, but whatever. I’ve just wanted the Unchained ult to have an effective knockback for forever.

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I’d like it if the Ult functioned more like a bomb-hit and threw things around, staggered bosse and blew CW up in the air, causing similar FF as a bomb too. The use of it would fundamentally change, and it is likely UC would be forced into melee more as it’d probably be a stupidly long slow cooldown.

Fun though.

Currently, it’s ok as it does what is needed (and really what everyone uses the ults for - not just UC) which is to remove overheat.

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How about “Yay, now I can break off for a moment and throw in a couple more shotgun blasts/fireballs/bolts/whatever, at the same time killing more enemies, gaining heat for more melee and enhancing everyone’s safety!”

Personally, I think if you use any Career Skill solely as an escape or panic button you are underutilizing them. If I save them only for the situation when I absolutely need them, I may well end up not using them at all - and what use was the whole thing then? Yeah, it’s something that you have to learn through experience, but finding the moments where using a skill can prevent a panic situation lets you use the skill more often - and more effectively, as you don’t have to dig yourself up from the desperate place and can instead return to more effective slaying faster.

Use it a second or two before you overheat, when you still have control of the situation to get even more space and to keep casting. Use it to stagger Packmasters, either when they’ve grabbed a friend or when one’s gunning for you. Use it to get that tiny bit of space so you can open up your heavy chain. There are more uses for it than saving oneself from an explosion, but you have to learn to recognize the situations for those.

All that said, I do have a couple of gripes… I agree that the Talents aren’t anything to write home about, with the extra damage not doing that much (and certainly not really opening up significant use options) and extra range even less with the weak stagger and damage. So CDR is pretty much the best choice. Also, a general, small stagger buff to the Skill wouldn’t be bad, I think. Nothing on the level of Kruber, WHC or Slayer, but maybe just enough to knock a Spawn out of the grab.

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